Notes and Words

Anyone still here? A lot has happened since September, so here's the digest version of the important things:

- I have officially graduated from the University of Colorado with a Master's Degree! My thesis, Urban Tales for jazz ensemble, has an optimistic performance future, but no details yet.

- I'll be in residence again this summer at the Brevard Music Center. Anyone in the area is more than welcome to stop in and say hi, and be sure to check out the Sunday night jazz at the HobNob, with me alongside none other than the incomparable Joe Luloff.

- Erik Steighner will be giving an encore performance of Oceanspeak this coming fall, November 13, at 2:00 PM in the Tacoma Art Museum. It's part of a Northwest Composers Program, and with the talent in that area it's sure to be incredible; don't miss it!

- As the classes roll out, the projects roll in; on the horizon are songs for some great CU musicians, and commissions are in the works for the the Corvallis Youth Symphony and the Hilltop Big Band. Details will be posted here as they roll in... check Notes and Words often!

- As I graduate, I also turn the reigns of the Pendulum website and blog to Hunter Ewen. Hunter's a great friend, gifted composer, and talented writer; I expect great things from his tenure as media manager. But if you ever find you missing me and my words on music, you can visit me here at Notes and Words or at my jazz column for the Examiner, which you can reach from the Links page. See you there!

Anyone who knows me reasonably well knows that among my less-savory pastimes is TV. In fact, I take my affinity for the box a fair amount further than pastime -- I love it. Nowhere is there a form of artistic expression more perfect for our attention-deficit culture than the half-hour episode. As the talent and budgets working in television have gotten bigger, the quality and artfulness of the average show have risen in leaps and bounds. With the advent of Hulu and network websites, content is more accessible than ever; and in the quest for relevance in art, a half-hour block of stories about our modern world and the people in it is as relevant as it gets.

As we roll into premiere season, I find myself thinking more and more about my favorite shows, what I see in them, and where (if anywhere) they transcend from being entertainment to being art. These are complex questions with plenty of valid answers, but some common threads do appear. One thing in particular has been on my mind: the romantic genius protagonist.

The primetime lineup is filled to the brim with main characters who are masters of their particular field, whether it be diagnostic medicine (House), creative fiction (Californication) or criminal anthropology (Bones); all are savants who live for their work, and all have pronounced trouble interacting with others. Their disconnect from their friends and surroundings makes them the geniuses that they are, but it torments them in private. Variations on this theme are all over television (House, Bones, Californication, Monk, M3ntal, just to name a few), and often they’re some of the highest rated shows on the air. We love characters who are the best at the expense of themselves, savants whose relationship with their surroundings recalls the impenetrability of the Romantic artist.

Meanwhile, the concert music community is, as always, afire with arguments about our inaccessibility and our struggle to relate to the average American. Outreach programs abound that feature “regular-guy” lectures by composers and performers. It seems almost every working chamber group is integrating popular genres into their programming (see Alarm Will Sound, the Turtle Island Quartet, and the Sybarite Chamber Players, to name a few), and with the advent of the Final Fantasy program Dear Friends and other such endeavors, these are trickling into the concert hall too. It doesn’t seem far-fetched to say that relevance is the motivating factor; the more we can say “See? We’re just like you!” the more we can deconstruct our stigma as a bastion of elitism in America and draw the rest of the country in.

We can debate the relative merits of this kind of programming later, but for now let’s tackle a (perhaps) more important question: is this really what people want? I’ve written before that full disclosure and abandonment of the mystery of our craft could be counterproductive. Now that I’ve permanently fixed myself to the boob-tube I’m thinking the entire line of friendliness may be misguided. If characters like Dr. House, Temperance Brennan and Hank Moody are any indication, the fact that an average audience member doesn’t understand a protagonist is not a deal-breaker. In fact, maybe they appreciate the mystery and the disconnect -- after all, half the charm of these characters is that they stubbornly remain themselves no matter how much their relationships suffer. This fascination with the mysterious genius isn’t new; looking as far back as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Jekyll we see a familiar preoccupation with the misunderstood genius.

Suddenly we find ourselves in a different position. In a world whose mainstream entertainment fetishizes a certain Romanticism, our art form is naturally mysterious and given to Romantic tropes. We have a great deal of mystery about us already; instead of trying to sweep it under the rug, what if we made it a selling point? TV shows us that relevance doesn’t necessarily mean characters exactly like ourselves; it can also mean making the unknown enticing and piquing the viewer’s curiosity. If we focused our energies on making the music seductively arcane, rather than striving for accessibility at any cost, what would be the consequence? Would we lose audience members to the prevailing wisdom no one likes this complicated music that they don’t understand? Or maybe, just maybe, can we make this mystery work for us? After all, our music has all the drama, sophistication, romance, and mystery of any TV show’s leading man -- and there’s no Vicodin required.

A quick news blast:

- Foolish Fire, written for Matthew Arau's Wind Symphony at Loveland High School, has been announced as the winner of the George Lynn Prize! After its December premiere by Loveland, the piece will be performed in the spring by the University of Colorado Wind Ensemble. There are lots of other exciting prospects in Foolish Fire's future, so stay tuned!

- Estadio for solo viola will be featured in early October on a masterclass given by the Kronos Quartet. Those of you in the Boulder area are more than welcome to drop by; check the Pendulum website (www.cu-pendulum.com) for more information on the exact dates and times.

- The Fifth House Ensemble's program Black Violet, featuring Movement I from Scenes from Childhood, opens in just two weeks. Check www.fifth-house.com for more information. Those of you in the Chicago area: this promises to be a killer show, so get tickets if you can!

- As always, my proverbial door is open for feedback or inquiries into my music. You can also follow me on Facebook, or on my other web project, the Pendulum site (linked above). Check there for my more opinionated music editorials, as well as breaking news about composition at CU.

A quick break from my busy summer at the Brevard Music Center to share a few things on the horizon:

- The Chicago-based Fifth House Ensemble has selected Movement I from Piano Quintet No. 1: Scenes from Childhood to be performed on their October program, a collaboration with graphic artist Ezra Claytan Daniels entitled Black Violet. Performance information will be posted as the date draws closer.

- The Juventas ensemble has added Three Portraits to their library, and may perform it soon. Stay tuned!

As the 2008-9 schoolyear comes to a long-awaited close, there's a fair amount of news to share!

- Audio from the extremely successful premiere of Piano Quintet No. 1: Scenes from Childhood has been posted. Score excerpts and program notes will follow, but I'll only make them a priority if specifically asked for; as you'll see down the page, I've got plenty else to do!

- The wonderful violist Anne Ristorcelli has commissioned a work to be premiered in August. More details as they come in.

- The premiere of Foolish Fire for winds with the Loveland High School Wind Ensemble has been postponed to this winter. Again, I'll keep you posted with news.

- There's more on the horizon, including teaching gigs in the fall and beyond; performances by me and of my music; and of course, the extremely productive summer I hope to have at the Brevard Music Center. I'll keep you informed every step of the way, but for right now, step away from the computer and enjoy the sun!

GSM has undergone a massive update this morning, and there's lots of new stuff!

- The list of works has been updated, and score/audio for Prometheus in the Dead Zone have been added. Audio and score for the fantastic April 8 performance of Piano Quintet No. 1 will be added as soon as the audio becomes available; I'd like to add them concurrently.

- The results for the 2009 ASCAP Morton Gould Awards are in, and I was named a finalist in this year's competition. Congratulations to the winners!

- I will be attending the Brevard Music Institute this summer as part of their composition program. If any fellow Brevard students stumble across my humble website, be sure to say hi!

- The Playground Ensemble is preparing for a performance of Movement I from Three Portraits on the 25th of April. Hope those of you in the Denver area can make it; check www.playgroundensemble.org for more details.

- Below find my latest contribution to Pendulum New Music's web presence: an interview I conducted with composer and Aspen Music Festival CEO Allan Fletcher during his February 2009 residency.



- It's come to my attention recently that there are, in fact, some GSM visitors in the wings, and my lackluster editing is noticed. If you visit GSM and are looking for something that's not there (or have anything you'd like to see changed), please comment on Notes and Words or use the contact link under the Learn tab so my friends at OssCode and I can get to work on it!

Michael Theodore's massive performance piece, What I Saw at the Apocalypse, premieres this Saturday, Feb. 28 in Boulder at the ATLAS Multimedia Center. I'll be performing, as will a large number of other Boulderites, including saxophonist John Gunther, Corigliano Quartet violinst Lina Bahn, and of course, Michael himself. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see an extremely unique production; tickets are free and there are two shows (one at 7PM and one at 9PM), so no excuses! For more info, check out http://www.colorado.edu/atlas/apocalypse/. See you there!

January 28: Prometheus in the Dead Zone on the Pendulum New Music Series. Grusin Performance Hall, University of Colorado.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all! A news blast from Santiago de Chile:

- Stella's Dance from Three Portraits will be performed by the Playground Ensemble of Denver, CO on their 2009 Colorado Composers' Concert. More information as the performance draws nearer, and also available at www.playgroundensemble.org.

- I've been named composer-in-residence with the Loveland High School Wind Ensemble, directed by Matthew Arau and Aaron Volgel. We're currently making plans for a new piece and a premiere next year; as always, check back for details.

Have a fantastic and safe New Year!

A little midnight-oil burning, working on my latest project, Prometheus in the Dead Zone. Here's a little news blast:

The great soul man, composer of Shaft and the immortal voice of Chef, has passed. Jim Fusili has a great profile of Mr. Hayes in today's Wall Street Journal, covering his greatest hits and some lesser known artistic projects. Take a moment to read it and remember this pop culture legend, children.

Being here in Aspen has given me time aplenty to think about advertising and classical music marketing. It's a topic I'll be talking a lot about when I have more writing time, but for right now let's start with a bang...



Really, I think the composer-themed cereal idea is a vastly underexplored one (Meyerbeerios, anyone?)... think of the possibilities.

Serious conversation next week, people.

Breaking news: I've been named a winner of the University of Nebraska at Omaha's 2008 Iron Composer competition! Along with four other winners, I'll go to Omaha in September for a day-long event in which we'll have six hours to compose and prepare a work using a musical "secret ingredient." More information about the competition and the other finalists can be found here; more information as it comes in. Yeah!

I was hoping that we'd be able to get comments into the site-based version of Notes and Words, but we're encountering some delays. No big deal, but as long as I'm flexing my writing chops, I'd love to have some interaction with readers. So, if you're reading, I'm going to (for now) direct you over to my Blogger-based Notes and Words, gregsimonmusic.blogspot.com. Feel free to, and please do, add your two cents on my extremely opinionated writings. I'll keep writing as long as I know someone's reading!

On a recent trip home, I watched with my family the 2007 film August Rush. August Rush is, as Roger Ebert describes it, "a very free modern adaptation of elements from Oliver Twist" involving Evan Taylor, the long lost son of a solo cellist and an Irish rock star. Evan begins a search for his parents, and through a series of trials and tribulations, realizes his prodigious talent as a guitarist and composer, and takes the stage name August Rush. The story culminates in young August conducting the New York Philharmonic in his first symphony, while his parents reunite in the audience and immediately recognize their long lost boy, who has finally found his parents.

At the end of the movie, I was the one person in the room who didn't have an ear-to-ear smile on my face. I absolutely respect the ability of others to get lost in the film's unabashed optimism and sentimentality, but for reasons I couldn't immediately describe, I hated that movie.

On further deliberation, I realized that what turned me off was the sheer number of inconsistencies between August's experience as a musician and my own. I can overlook the extremely implausible good luck he encounters (an 8-year-old with months of musical training is conducting the NY Phil? Wow, can I go next?), because clearly the movie demands acceptance of that aspect on its terms. But what got to me further was writer Nick Castle's portrayal of the little guy's creative process. I couldn't bring myself to identify with August; because while he papers walls with musical sketches minutes after first encountering a piano, I toil for months before feeling good enough about an idea to write it down, and perhaps never feel good about the finished product. I don't know if there's been a composer since Mozart who worked as fast and carefree as August Rush, and if there has been, he probably wasn't very good. Try as I might, I couldn't envision such a character as being close to realistic, and the skepticism hit too close to home for me to enjoy watching it.

Of course, sharing these opinions with others brought several accusations forward: I was being elitist, I was being too intellectual, and perhaps most hurtful, I was jealous. Apparently composers aren't supposed to feel so possessive of the creative process. Of course, I should have expected such a reaction; composers told their public for a good part of the twentieth century that art music wasn't for them. Only recently have we almost universally begun to consider accessibility a valid artistic concern. There's a lingering distrust of complex new music, and we as an artistic community are trying to come down to earth, partially through demystifying the creative process. Even John Corigliano implicates composers as far back as Wagner for coveting incomprehensibility:

God became the composer. If you go to any church, the one thing you know is that you don't understand God. You can't understand God. So, all of a sudden, this virtue of incomprehensibility sprung up. "I am incomprehensible because my message is so much more complex and morally stronger than the message of those people who were just speaking to you that you can understand. Therefore, you shouldn't understand me..." [they created] the egocentric idea of the artist-god and the audience-worshipper—the non-communication that that means—and bathed us in this until finally the audience was alienated by this and left...

And in many ways, I agree. Obviously composers are not gods, and art should express ideas intelligible and enlightening to non-artists. But while I will expect a motivated, curious audience to understand my music, I will never expect them to understand my creative process. The way in which I write music is extremely personal, and I only have a very limited understanding of it, so how could I expect (or want) to enlighten the audience to it? Any possible explanation I could give would misrepresent, even cheapen, the work that composing takes.

But perhaps that demystification is what audiences are looking for. Maybe that's why people loved August; his creative process was totally exposed. We could tell exactly where his music came from, and we could share in the elation he obviously felt during the creative process. We could watch him compose and we could say, "that's exactly how it works." Maybe that's one of the reasons people loved Amadeus and Copying Beethoven, two works (like August Rush) written by non-musicians. And meanwhile, as the new music community tries desperately to make itself relevant, that kind of full disclosure is doing wonders to humanize and endear composers to the audience.

In all honesty, though, I don't feel prepared to deliver on that full disclosure. It would be foolish of me to think I can completely explain how I compose, and it would be presumptuous to speak about that process on behalf of any composer but myself. And even if I could define my musical mode d'emploi for an audience member, my guess is that they would be disappointed to find out how unromantic (read: unlike August's) it really is. Maybe the reason I disliked August Rush so much lies somewhere in there: it's setting an expectation for what composers are like that I can't hope to meet. And if an August Rush fan goes to a concert of new music hoping to meet seven grown-up Evan Taylors, will they leave with anything but a sense of disappointment and betrayal, no matter what the music is like?

Just what should expected of a composer? Should he/she be prepared to divulge every aspect of the very personal compositional process? Is it elitist to take issue with Hollywood's presumptions about it? And is it even more elitist to suggest that, perhaps, there is a mystery inherent in composition that will never be penetrated (not even by the artist)? Possibly the answer is "yes," and I really am jealous of August's success... but I couldn't write as much about that.